Jazz Articles about Juan Rollan

About Juan Rollan

Album Review

Sleigh Ride is a modern jazz Christmas gift from pianist and composer Joshua Bowlus which will brighten the holiday season. Joshua performs as the bandleader for his own trio and quartet. The thirteen-track album features long-time friends and musical collaborators Linda Cole on vocals, Juan Rollan on tenor sax, Stan Piper on bass and Ben Adkins on drums. Bowlus collaborates regularly with vocalist Linda Cole, a niece of Nat King Cole and a member of his family dynasty.

Album Review

Madre Vaca: Knights of the Round Table

Read "Knights of the Round Table" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 26, 2023

The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is depicted musically on Knights of the Round Table, the sixth album by the Florida-based eleven-member ensemble, Madre Vaca, whose themes are composed by drummer Benjamin Shorstein. While Knights is presented as a ten-part suite, there seems to be no connecting tissue aside from the names of individual works --"Arthur," “Camelot," “Galahad," “Merlin," “Guinevere" and “Lancelot" among them. True, there seems to be an over-all medieval vibe underlining Shorstein's music, ...

Album Review

Madre Vaca: Winterreise

Read "Winterreise" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 24, 2020

For its third recording, the Florida-based jazz octet Madre Vaca has chosen to perform music by Franz Schubert—hold it; stop right there! Music by who? Yes, that's what it says—music by none other than Franz Schubert (1797-1828), an Austrian composer of what we know as classical music who in his brief lifetime wrote more than 600 secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies (and the well-known “Unfinished"), as well as sacred chorales, operas, and chamber, piano and incidental music. When did ...